It may be winter but most bears have been given a good hiding. The current bull run has steamrolled a lot of worries; be it faltering growth, earning downgrades, the Goods and Services Tax implementation hiccups and the Reserve Bank of India’s refusal to play ball on interest rates. In this ‘new normal’ market, even the threat of a North Korean nuclear war gets discounted in a couple of sessions. But as the year draws to a close, the benchmark indices, Nifty and Sensex, have given up some of their gain on uncertainty about the upcoming Gujarat assembly elections and fear of the FY18 fiscal deficit being breached. Still, as this special issue goes to print, they are up 22% for the year.